The team were only to play one match a week from now on, but in my opinion, the damage had already been done and the sides performances and then results took a gradual downward turn which culminated in a woeful run in April.
Although City kept in touch with their rivals with a 1-0 home win over Hull four days later, they certainly rode their luck to get the three points. Cameron Jerome capitalised on hesitancy in the visitor's defence when he ran on to a Purse header to lob the ball over Myhill and into the net after 22 minutes, but, after that, it was a rearguard action as a far livelier Hull side dominated and should really have returned to Yorkshire with at least a point. In fact, Hull should have equalised within a minute of Jerome's goal, but Alexander pulled off a marvellous save from Parkin. City's keeper made other good saves and was an obvious man of the match for his side - supporters had to get used to their goalkeeper or one of the central defenders being their teams best player in home games from now on!
Given the way the season panned out, a 2-1 defeat at Watford the following week was no disgrace. Indeed, City could argue they were unlucky because in injury time a Koumas free kick came back off the upright only two or three minutes after Scimeca had gifted Marlon King the winning goal with an awful back pass. However the truth was that City spent most of the game hanging on against the team who were to finish third in the table and their goal lead a charmed life until Mackay put the home side in front with just over twenty minutes to go. To their credit, City weren't behind for long as Jeff Whiltey made the sort of forward run beyond the strikers that we saw far too little of from midfielders during the season and finished well from Koumas' pass for his only goal of the campaign. However, Scimeca's blunder ensured that the team got nothing from the match and the Play Off dream faded that bit further away.
In the week before the side were next in action, the club filed a revised Business Plan for the new ground scheme with the Council. Reassuringly, the Plan's forecasts had been backed by reputable independent financial experts and the Council extended the deadline, due to expire at the of March, by another two months for their officials to scrutinise it - a decision is still awaited from them, it had generally been expected that this would come in early May, but, apparently, “new financial information” has come to light and there are now reports of a further extension of up to four months being required!
City's home game with Sheffield Wednesday bore an uncanny resemblance to the one against Hull a fortnight earlier. Just like against Hull, the team started pretty well and probably deserved the lead Cameron Jerome gave them around the twenty minute mark - this time Jerome netted with a clever close range back heel from a Koumas corner, but from there it was again a question of backs to the wall defence as the familiar midfield fade out handed the initiative to a Wednesday team with only those clubs in the three relegation positions below them in the table. Whereas City had blown Wednesday away in the televised game at Hillsborough in November, now they laboured all over the pitch as the away team won virtually all of the second balls on offer and, once again it was mainly down to the performances of Alexander (man of the match again) and Cox and Purse in central defence that City somehow emerged with another 1-0 win. Having said that, Purse could have been the villain of the piece if his clumsy second half foul in the box had been penalised as it should have been - City had been denied obvious penalties on three or four occasions throughout the season, but this time, as their manager admitted after the game, it was them who got lucky.
Some matches are described as “must win games”, but City's visit to Molineux to face Wolves seven days later was definitely a “must not lose game”. The teams occupied seventh and eighth place in the table and were struggling to keep on terms with the top six - defeat would surely leave the loser with too much ground to catch up. If City's recent displays hardly inspired confidence, they had at least been grinding out victories and they could take heart from the fact that Wolves' home record was poor with way too many drawn games as they struggled to average more than a goal a game in front of their demanding and expectant fans.
Only four days earlier, a Stoke side with nothing to play for had been the better side in a 0-0 draw at Molineux and, if the game had been played against the pre Christmas City team, I would have been confident about the outcome. However, unlike in the first half of the campaign, City had now developed a habit of losing to those sides above them in the league and they did so again here.
I would have thought that visiting Wolves in the Championship is much the same as going to Ninian Park when we were in what is now League One between 2001 and 2003 - opposing teams knew that if they could keep things tight for 15/20 minutes then the sections of our support who thought we had a divine right to promotion would start to get on the teams back and what confidence they had would begin to quickly ebb away. City needed to adopt a similar approach at Wolves, but instead they let the home side dominate from the start and the goal they got from Rosa in the 15th minute could really have come much earlier.
Although the game evened up a bit after that, Wolves were always pretty comfortable and once Miller had scored from the spot after fifty four minutes following Cox's foul on Frankowski, there was obviously no way back for City. Wolves' 2-0 winning margin was just about a fair reflection of the difference between the two sides and the general feeling was that City could now start looking forward to another season in the Championship (not that lots of supporters would have complained about that at the start of the campaign mind!).
However, a surprising loss of form from Preston was giving City a lifeline to cling to. Although the points difference between the teams had never been that great, the fact that Preston had as many as three games in hand on City always gave them a big advantage, but now that Preston were actually getting around to playing those games in hand, it wasn't looking as much as an advantage as it had seemed at the time. It wasn't that Preston were losing many matches (they only lost six throughout the regular season), but they had stopped winning and the goals had dried up - they were in the middle of a run that saw them win just once in seven games and so City went into the game at Plymouth still in the running for a top six place.
Glenn Loovens had been on the bench in recent games having recovered from his injury, but Dave Jones brought him into the starting line up at Home Park. Loovens came in for Neil Cox, who certainly hadn't had let the team down in the past two months, and Jeff Whitley was also dropped as Kevin Cooper made a return to the team - for me the Whitley/Scimeca central midfield partnership had just not worked as both sat too deep and had proved to be surprisingly ineffective as ball winners.
Having sometimes been over cautious on their travels, City had no alternative now but to go for the three points given the position they found themselves in and they responded with their best football in weeks as they continually forced an in form home side back. After almost conceding a goal in the first minute, City created plenty of decent opportunities and they certainly should have gone ahead when a good passing movement culminated in Cooper rolling an inviting pass across the six yard box to the unmarked Cameron Jerome who, with keeper Larrieu looking isolated on his near post, seemingly only had to tap the ball in. However, Jerome somehow managed to scuff the ball back across the goal straight into the arms of the Plymouth keeper who could not believe his luck!
It really was a candidate for miss of the season and, sadly, was to symbolise Jerome's end to the campaign. In the days before this game, Jerome had made some ill advised press comments about how he needed to be working with better players and coaches if he was to develop and that, if City didn't get promoted, he would be off to the Premiership in the summer. Upon reading this, I, wrongly as it turned out, thought of the article as just a storm in teacup that would soon be forgotten, but, there was evidence that Jerome's comments had upset some of his team mates (and, possibly, his manager) and it also became increasingly obvious that some supporters now looked at the player in a completely different light. Whether you belonged in the camp that saw Jerome as something of a traitor who will not be missed when his seemingly inevitable transfer goes through this summer or took the more sympathetic line that he was a naïve, young kid going through a crisis of confidence after being too open with the media, what is beyond dispute is that, from hereon in, the player who had been one of the most effective strikers in the league, looked a shadow of his former self.
Thankfully, Jerome's howler didn't have a bearing on the final outcome - the same player came up with a lovely cross from the right on 34 minutes which was powerfully headed into net the by Steve Thompson for his first goal since scoring two on his debut a couple of months earlier. There could have been further goals for City after that, but they spent much of the second half defending as the home side put them under something of an aerial bombardment and in the end they emerged deserved 1-0 winners.
There was good news from other matches as well with Preston losing at Sheffield Wednesday and Wolves only drawing. The team were now right back in the mix in the battle for that final play off spot and, unlike their rivals, were not really weighed down by the burden of supporters expectations - a good run of results over the next six weeks could see the season extended into May, but, instead it was to end in something of a whimper with only pride at stake throughout April.